Kings 5, Canucks 1: An egregious loss, according to Rick Tocchet

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Are you ready for Los Angeles Kings playoff hockey?

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The Vancouver Canucks appear not to be.

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Good thing they have three more games to find their way because round one of their four-game regular season series started off on the wrong foot for the Canucks.

Missing five of their regular skaters, the Kings played tight-checking, spirit-numbing hockey at Rogers Arena on Thursday and skated out 5-1 winners over the answerless home team.

Imagine facing them in the playoffs.

Imagine the Canucks still having to face them three more times.

The Canucks’ run-out to the season is going to be as big a test as can be; they will be ready for the playoffs one way or another.

Rick Tocchet is clearly worried. His team has won just three times in regulation in their last 13 games. Crucial mistakes let his team down against a potential playoff opponent.

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“I don’t think we gave them a lot but what we gave them was egregious,” he said.

Don’t fall behind

The Kings are as solid defensively as it gets in the NHL, so when they opened the scoring midway through the first period, you knew the Canucks were up against it.

The stranglehold from L.A. was immediate: the Canucks had just three shots in the first period. There was just no room in the L.A. offensive zone.

And they struggled to find much in the game; the only goal they scored was on a third-period power play. They generated little at even strength as L.A. made the slot and top of the crease a no-go area.

The Canucks didn’t help themselves even when the game was tied, Tocchet believed. His team wasn’t winning enough puck battles.

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“In the first period, you know, they were coming with the puck; we’d have two, they’d have two and they’d come out with the puck,” he said.

And they created LA’s opportunity on the opening goal, scored by Drew Doughty.

The Canucks had put a lot of pressure in the L.A. zone and were controlling the play well, but a lackadaisical change by J.T. Miller, then the rest of his line, led to disaster. The slow skate to the bench reminded Tocchet of the bad habits he saw in his team when he first arrived a year ago.

“The change was bad and then obviously our coverage sucked, even though we had people there. Those things just can’t happen; it’s gonna happen once in a while, I get it, but it’s just been happening too frequently right now,” he said.

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Find your space better

There’s not a lot space when you’re playing the Kings. And to maximize what space you can find, you need better body positioning, Tocchet said.

“Sometimes our body position, I hate to say mind-boggling, but for some reason we’re backs against the wall. You gotta be in front of…like it’s body position, then it’s the puck,” he said.

On the Kings side, they said it was the best 60 minutes they’d put together all season.

Goalie Cam Talbot saw firsthand the frustration exhibited by the Canucks.

“That’s what we’re best at, when we’re frustrating teams like that, especially their top talent — made it tough for them to come through the neutral zone,” he said.

The Kings stymied the Canucks’ efforts to carry the puck into the zone with control, forcing them to dump the puck in instead.

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“They had to give up the puck a lot and that’s not something they’d like to do. They carry the puck and create off the rush and we didn’t really allow them to do that tonight, so you could definitely sense the frustration whenever they had to give up the puck and go get it. Just goes to show when we stick to our system and we play it properly, how tough we can be to beat,” Talbot said.

Second goal: not how you draw it up

Elias Pettersson is not in his best stretch of hockey.

But the fumble and then lack of coverage on the Kings’ second goal, which put a dagger in the Canucks’ hopes, was possibly his lowest moment of the season.

He was trying to move the puck to Tyler Myers, and instead lost the handle on the puck, which slid across the zone and before you knew it, Anze Kopitar, whom he probably should have covered, had wired a perfect shot past Thatcher Demko.

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From bad to worse

Filip Hronek was whistled for a holding call in the third period that really wasn’t.

But you have to deal with those moments.

And somehow the moment because a disaster. Ian Cole made an awful read on a Kings zone entry and Kevin Fiala was left unattended at the side of the net to tap in the Kings’ third goal, which came shortly after the Canucks had finally cracked the Kings’ goose egg on a lovely power play goal by Brock Boeser.

Cole said after the game he’d thought Kopitar was going to dump the puck — “99.9 per cent of the time, in that moment, in that sequence, that puck is getting rimmed in” — but was caught out at the last minute by the future Hall of Famer.

“And the guy (Fiala) didn’t even know the puck was coming,” he added. Bad read, compounded by bad reads.

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And then the Kings scored twice more, both goals coming off of terrible defensive plays.

Reaction time by Garland

It didn’t result in a goal, but Garland’s reaction to a chance in the second period off a crazy bounce following a Myers wraparound attempt was impressive.

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The amount of time he had to react was minuscule.

Lotto!

We’ve been wondering why Tocchet wouldn’t go back to the Lotto Line at times, but he did on this night, twice.

First in the first period following an early penalty kill.

Not much happened though.

Then again in the third, with his team trying to find something, anything, to come back from a 3-1 deficit.

But nothing much there, either.

And indeed they were brutal on the Kings’ fourth goal.

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Penalties!

Tocchet has regularly spoken about his team needing to cut down on penalties.

The Canucks have been the most penalized team in the NHL since the All-Star break.

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Arshdeep Bains taking a tripping penalty in the first minute of the game, miles from his own net, was not the kind of penalty his coach wants to see. At all.

NEXT GAME

Sunday

Vancouver Canucks vs. Anaheim Ducks

5 p.m., Honda Center, TV: SN Pacific, Radio: Sportsnet 650

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